


we will rise as the buildings crumble

by openended



Series: we will rise as the buildings crumble [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-28
Updated: 2011-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sam fully expected the end of the world to be more spectacular.  It would start with ships in orbit or pale men with powerful staffs or a wormhole that wouldn’t close.  And soon after there would be burning and explosions and an enemy.  She’d fight it with a gun in her hands, or at least a computer at her fingertips with a never-quite-full coffeepot an arm’s length away.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Except, it started with a cough.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	we will rise as the buildings crumble

**01\. bob dylan :: things have changed**

**  
**

Sam fully expected the end of the world to be more spectacular. It would start with ships in orbit or pale men with powerful staffs or a wormhole that wouldn’t close. And soon after there would be burning and explosions and an enemy. She’d fight it with a gun in her hands, or at least a computer at her fingertips with a never-quite-full coffeepot an arm’s length away.

Except, it started with a cough. And soon after there were health warnings and gas masks and people staying inside and there was no enemy, at least not one she could see. She couldn’t fight it; she wasn’t even there.

She was in Maine, with Cam, on General O’Neill-enforced downtime after Woolsey took over in Atlantis and she finally gave into the long-overdue urge to break a very expensive piece of equipment. All they could do was stay inside and hope that years of traveling to other planets boosted their immune systems as much as it did their senses of adventure.

The last text message she receives before the cell phone grid goes out is from General O’Neill: _if you’re still alive, get your asses back here._

They’re still pissed him for telling them to stay put when the disease first hit, but they’re soldiers through and through and can recognize an order when they see it.

 

**02\. iggy pop :: lust for life**

**  
**

The good thing of it is that most of the small fishing village they’d ended up in ( _I don’t care_ , the General had said, _throw a dart at a map, just spend some time away from this base_ ) has died in the week the two of them have been hermetically-sealed inside the beach cottage. Those that didn’t succumb to the virus have either left or become, in Cam’s words, crazy isolationist survivalists with shotguns and beer. They don’t have much competition when they break into the Shaw’s and Rite-Aid for supplies.

A battered blue pickup came with the cottage and it only takes them an hour to load it up with mismatched camping gear, spare gas tanks, Sam’s laptop ( _just in case, Cam_ ), groceries and a giant box of band-aids. They’re almost ready to go before Cam realizes that they don’t have a clue how to get from here to Colorado Springs.

“West,” Sam says.

“Thank you,” Cam says, voice dripping with sarcasm as he disappears inside. He shuffles through drawers and shelves in the cottage’s “office” (really just a room with some outdated local travel books and a computer so ancient Sam wouldn’t even touch it) until he returns to the truck, triumphantly holding a map of the country.

Sam throws Rock and Cam throws Paper and despite her protests that there is no way Paper would ever beat Rock, Cam takes the keys out of her hand and gestures for her to hop into the passenger seat.

 

**03\. tom petty :: refugee**

**  
**

After two days of fiddling with the radio and picking up nothing but static and the occasional _we are still alive_ broadcast (mildly concerned about what kind of people have swarmed there, they steer clear of any town mentioned on the radio), Sam gives up and puts a moratorium on the radio. It starts to rain in New Haven.

“What are you doing?” Cam asks, taking his eyes off the wet road long enough to see Sam unbuckle her seatbelt and twist around the seat to look around in the back. Her ass is suddenly at eye level. He blinks and focuses on the road. There isn’t any traffic, but there are parked cars and abandoned accidents left by people who inconveniently decided to succumb to the virus while on the highway.

Sam’s voice is muffled. “There has _got_ to be music here somewhere.” Coming up empty from the back, she drops down into her seat again and checks the glove compartment. “A _ha_ ,” she triumphantly pulls a CD case from underneath useless maps, insurance papers, and a tire pressure gauge. Without even looking at the track listing, she pops it in.

Bob Dylan tells them that people are crazy and times are strange, and the rain stops before they get to New York.

They pick up I-70 just outside of Baltimore. Sam crosses her arms and points at the sign overhead. “We did not need a map.”

**  
**

**04\. peter gabriel :: games without frontiers**

 

“If there’s nothing here, Terra Haute’s a bit down the road,” Cam says, squinting at the map in the twilight. They still have one tank of gas in the back of the truck, but they’re about to need it and they’ve decided to always have a backup.

“It’s like they came up with Indianapolis and said _we’re done now_ and stole names from elsewhere,” Sam muses, taking the exit for Brazil. Her brain immediately switches into soldier auto-pilot. “Heads up,” she says, motioning to a shadow sprinting down the street, followed by several more.

Cam holds on as Sam swings the truck in a tight circle and floors the accelerator to catch up and block the pursuers. “What’s going on here?” he asks, casually, as he jumps out of the truck. He’s immediately told to mind his own goddamn business and get out of the fucking way. Cam simply slides out of his jacket, revealing his sidearm.

Sam sizes up the group and hops out, leaving the truck idling in case they need to make a quick getaway. It’s a risk, but she’s willing to take it. “Are you okay?” she whispers to the girl, shivering and hiding in the shadows. The girl nods. “Do you have someplace safe to go?” Another nod. “Okay, go. We’ll take care of this.” A smile of thanks and the girl disappears. She turns around.

Cam’s holding his own against the four men trying to beat him up for interfering, but Sam’s angry about what would have happened and, besides, she’s been in a car for a week and needs to hit something. They leave the four men in a pile in the middle of the road, alive but injured. Cam whispers a warning to the apparent leader.

They get gas in Terra Haute.

 

**05\. black rebel motorcycle club :: red eyes and tears**

 

It is pouring rain when they make it to St. Louis and they pitch the tent underneath an overpass. They’ve tried sleeping in the truck before and it doesn’t end well. The overpass protects them from most of the rain, but it’s windy and they’re soaked to the bone by the time they have the tent set up and their gear tossed inside.

Sam strips naked and wraps a towel around herself while she digs through her bag for dry clothes. Cam watches her for a moment, getting a glimpse of curves he remembers well, before turning and finding dry clothes of his own. He looks over his shoulder and catches her staring; she blushes and turns away. He smirks.

The rain stops and they manage to build a fire in the middle of the road. Dinner is apples and Power Bars because neither of them is interested in making anything legitimate. The rain starts up again just after they’ve finished packing everything away and they head into the tent for the night.

Cam has the first syllable of a joking _strip poker?_ formed when Sam kisses him. It’s unexpected, but he’s not so shocked as to not kiss her back.

Sam shivers, suddenly shirtless and missing a bra. She smiles; Cam’s learned a few tricks since the last time they did this. She manages to tug his shirt off before he brushes her hands away and focuses on divesting her of her clothes. He holds her steady while she steps out of her pants and shoes, and then guides her down onto a sleeping bag.

She blinks and, before this goes too far, whispers something about running out of birth control back in Pennsylvania and that condoms were stupidly not part of their survival kit. Cam chuckles.

“Plenty of other fun things to do,” he whispers, running his tongue across her nipple.

 

**06\. wilson pickett :: mustang sally**

**  
**

Sam huffs and glares at the twenty – no, twenty-three, she missed the two motorcycles and the yellow Mini on her first count – car accident crossing all lanes of the highway, including the median. Part of her, the part that’s seen too many post-apocalyptic movies, wonders if this isn’t an accident and is actually an intentional roadblock. The rest of her, the part that’s a Colonel in the Air Force and a scientist, doubts it and blames it on panic, chaos and an epidemic. Cam smirks at her from the hood of the truck where he has the map spread out.

“Don’t,” she says.

He doesn’t. “We can take 29 north and then pick any one of these state roads and come back down,” he traces the route with his finger.

All useful exits are blocked – Cam’s beginning to side with the part of Sam that’s seen too many movies and they both get a little freaked out that someone might be guiding them in a direction they don’t want to go – and they pick up 80 in Omaha the next morning. They’ll take it to Denver and hope that there aren’t too many people left in Denver to give them a hard time.

“Two men enter, one man leaves?” Cam quips, noticing a hand-painted sign for _bartertown, 100mi._

Sam shrugs and they drive in silence for a while. They’re taking a break from the CD. If it didn’t feel so weird, she’d break into any one of the abandoned cars they’ve passed and liberate a new disc.

**  
**

**07\. jimi hendrix :: all along the watchtower**

 

Bartertown is a mish-mash of people and stuff that’s all congregated in the middle of Nebraska, fifty miles from anything useful. For ten miles, they’ve passed signs advertising _beer, food, trading, and doctors_ and they need to stop for the night anyway.

They wander through the market, amazed at stalls offering everything from haircuts and hand-knit socks to working flashlight batteries and chapstick. Cam trades two rolls of toilet paper and a box of Wheat Chex for a tank of gas while Sam hotwires a car in exchange for a cold Diet Coke. For dinner, tired of playing _Chopped_ with the dwindling grocery supplies in their truck, they end up at the town’s bar.

They’re served by a tall, redheaded woman in a dress and knee-high boots that match a different era. The beer is less beer and more bathtub gin, but it’s booze and the food is surprisingly good and they’ve miraculously picked a day without any brawls. In their efforts to avoid enclaves of crazies, they’d also missed all the tiny – and, in the case of Bartertown, not so tiny – towns that popped up, full of people trying to make the best of it.

They leave the next morning with a list of supplies and promise that, if they can, they’ll set up a Colorado Springs-Bartertown run.

“Okay, _fine_ ,” she relents, her head pounding.

“I told you we needed the map.”

She dry-swallows four Advil and stares out the window.

 

**08\. guns ‘n roses :: sweet child of mine**

 

“I’ve read this book,” Sam says as they cross the border into Colorado.

“We’re not going to Boulder,” Cam reassures her.

But they drive close enough to it to make both of them uncomfortable.

 

**09\. journey :: don’t stop believin’**

 

Denver is a problem.

“Shit,” Sam curses. Apparently all the crazies flocked to Denver and fifteen of them are now blocking their path down the highway. “Fucking Kansas City,” she grumbles; they would’ve bypassed this if the road hadn’t been blocked.

“I could run ‘em over,” Cam says, as if it’s a legitimate possibility. They’re so close to the Springs that he feels like he could spit and hit his apartment. They’ve been driving for two weeks now, thanks to detours around roadblocks and suspicious-looking towns, and he’s really not so concerned with the survival of the human race as to not knock over these goons like a bunch of bowling pins. He wants to be done and out of this truck. He’s thinking about lighting it on fire.

One of them shoots at the truck, aiming for the wheel but missing.

Cam rolls down the window. “Okay,” he shouts, “but you shot first.” He revs the engine and, to their credit, most of the men get out of the way immediately. The others dive to the side once they see the blue truck coming directly for them.

They try to shoot at the truck as Cam drives by, but Sam pushes out the back window and catches almost all of them with a few well-placed zat blasts.

“Where did you get a zat?” Cam isn’t entirely sure that he’s surprised.

Sam smiles.

 

**10\. lyle lovett :: i will rise up**

 

Sam nearly cries when they drive past the sign welcoming them to Colorado Springs. The city’s deserted, which they expected, but it still feels like coming home.

Cam drives to the base slowly. He pulls up to the gated entrance; the usual guards are missing and all that stands in their way is a locked gate and a radio box that may or may not be working. He looks at Sam. “Well.” They haven’t talked about what to do if the base is deserted or, worse, populated by the same breed of survivor they ran into in Denver.

She leans across the seat and kisses his cheek before unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping out of the truck. She stretches, enjoying the sunlight and no longer sitting down, while Cam shuts off the truck and joins her.

“Hey!” Cam shouts into the intercom. “Anyone down there?”

Static.

And then, _“Mitchell, is that you?”_

“Yes, sir,” he says, recognizing General O’Neill’s voice. “Got Carter with me and everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> The fanmix - which actually came first - is [here](http://8tracks.com/earharts/we-will-rise-as-the-buildings-crumble).
> 
> And, for what it's worth, the Grey's Anatomy version of this story is located [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/205073).


End file.
